All human knowledge is provisional but it is also incremental, the sum of what we know to day is far greater than thirty years ago - with, possibly, the sole exception of marketing/advertising.

It is more than possible that people may look back on the six or seven years either side of 2000 as a period of aberration, when advertising people temporarily became obsessed with techology. And totally forgot that the most intoxicating thing is our ability to communicate face to face once we fully understand the real meaning of the words "to communicate".

Advertising Agencies rushed into broadcast television and, more recently the internet, the reason for this has nothing to do with advertising effectiveness, but all to do with economic imperatives. After all agencies tend to nuture their own illusions.

Similarly it is always possible to face any problem simply by fixating on fictional evidence, i.e. "Advertising works".

So to answer my own question, advertising does work when properly executed, however judging from the lack of understanding of the communication process emanating from agencies, perhaps "Advertising Agencies don't work"!

However ask the same question of interactive advertising and the answer is astoundingly different.

Current conventional media are wear conductors of knowledge and comprehension. This is because of a number of factors, however the main reason is; they are non-interactive communications vehicles, in other words "conversations" cannot take place.

A considerable investment in research has established that interaction raises a communication's learning effectiveness.

The one problem facing interactive advertising is the fact that it has become a cliche in recent years, without any clear of consistent definition of what the word means or how it is supposed to work.

Properly executed it has none of the wolly theorising that lies behind the arguments about various forms of so-called interactive communication using direct marketing and electronic media (most of which involves at best the minimum of true interactivity). And all the emerging new technology are merely facilitators of interaction.

It is also practical, down-to-earth, and uses a readily comprehensible and verified mechanism to expand the relevance and salience of advertising and other forms of marketing communications. It can be applied to all major media and to various other forms of communication, including new media and to various other forms of communication, including new media.

There is no theoretical reason why it should not also be applied to packaging designs or product literature.

The basic elements of interactive communication are very simple, as all communication should be. The target audience - or any part of them -are provided with a game, comprising a quiz together with multiple choice answers.

This takes the reader/viewer through the details of a commercial or advertisement and focuses their interest and attention on the product's selling points.

The questionaire is (usually) presented as an exercise in getting the public's opinion about the products. The effect is to combine the techniques of prodremmed learning and game playing to fix the advertising message in consumers' minds.

The programme is very flixable and can be distributed by mail, door-to-door, on TV,as a hand out in shopping malls, or as a newspaper or magazine insert.

The traditional, though out-dated, model of communication against which advertising has been judged is a one-way process wherebe a Sender sends a message to a Receiver, who is then expected to absorb and act upon it. Although any consumer-aware advertising person knows well that consumers use ads. rather than the reverse, the practice in most agencies remains the traditional one of pushing ads out toward the market and hoping for a response....very wasteful and ineffective!